American schools once ran entirely on informal authority without written norms

Evidence

In the past, schools were places where children learned to read and write, to do math, and, in addition, to obey the rules. The rules were for the most part informal; the teacher was in charge of the classroom, the principal in charge of the school, and the school board in charge of the district. In a few rare instances, some parent or student challenged the way schools were run, but these exceptional incidents ended, for the most part, in failure. … There were no written norms, no procedures, no structure of appeals. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 184

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Breakdown of informal dress norms in the 1960s forced schools into formal codes — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 185